not bad for a creaky economy. right? >> having that first number start with a 2, having the 200,000-plus job numbers is really good. people will be encouraged by that. >> reporter: gregory roston with stanford's institute for economic policy research says the economy is showing positive signs, but he cautions we still have a low labor participation rate, meaning plenty of folks are staying on the sidelines not looking for work or they're underemployed. >> pass a one-year delay of obama care. >> reporter: as for those shenanigans in washington, did we really survive unscathed? roston says that's extremely unlikely despite recent news. >> is this validation to all those folks, don't worry about a government shutdown, it won't really hurt our economy? >> i don't think so. this is something where you don't know what would have happened if we hadn't had the shutdown. we could have gotten this 250,000 job increase. there were a lot of people who cut gback on spending. consumer spenting dropped a lot. you had contractors who di